Кейт Мур - Felix The Railway Cat

A smile crossed her face as she scribbled it down: Pest controller needs nourishment .

After that, they often referred to Felix as ‘the pest controller’.

But perhaps another nickname would have been more apt: The Destroyer. For although Felix had a scratching post, she preferred to rake her claws along the office chairs, or the fabric noticeboards, or her colleague’s clothes (and hands). She was growing larger and bolder by the day, and had now learned to combine two of her favourite games: the climbing-frame athletics extravaganza she’d perfected with Gareth, and the old-school trouser tango with which she’d used to terrorise her grandfather, Chris Briscoe.

A colleague would be walking along, minding their own business, when Felix would suddenly launch herself at them and run up their back. They’d feel the tell-tale twinge of cat claw, and then the full weight of the kitten as she anchored herself to their work trousers. Then she’d be up, up and away – dragging her claws through the fabric as she ascended their legs, moving on to the slippery smooth surface of a work shirt, giving a trampoline-like push up onto the shoulder, and then the pièce de resistance as she reached the summit: claiming the head. Her claws were such that it rather felt like being skewered with a flag reading ‘Felix’ when she reached the top.

She tried this trick with lots of people but, unsurprisingly, not many of the team enjoyed the sensation of a cat using them for mountaineering practice, so it was only a hardy few, like Gareth, whom she used consistently for her energetic climbs.

The team’s trousers were in a right state: full of tiny holes and pulls in them, from where she’d at least tried to run up their legs before being lifted off. It was clear to everyone that Felix was going a little stir crazy.

It was now the middle of August 2011. She’d just had her twelve-week birthday and her second – and final – inoculation jab. Her age was clear for all to see, for as the weeks had passed Felix’s eyes had taken on their adult pigment, changing from their kitten blue to a beautiful, shimmering green; just like her mother’s.

It’s always a tough thing for any parent to recognise, but Gareth Hope, on a late turn, realised that Felix was now ready to meet the outside world. Up until this point, excepting her trips to the vet, she had resided only in the office with the door always shut tight, preventing any escape. Felix knew that was the way the world worked: people came in and out, but the door was always closed to her.

That evening, as the summer twilight faded to dusk and the night set in, Gareth took a deep breath and lodged open the door.

‘Here you go,’ he said to his little friend. ‘You can have a look outside.’

Felix almost gave a double take – are you sure? – before she ran out, tripping over her toes on this great adventure. She ran bravely straight to the public doors, which were just beyond the office door and always open. Then she stopped dead, on the threshold to Platform 1, as though surprised to find that there wasn’t simply another office beyond, but instead a very big, and very wide, world. She almost skidded to a halt, as though her senses had been hit by a sledgehammer, and she could go no further until she’d digested all this newness .

It was quite late, so the station was quiet. But that was quiet in comparison to rush hour – and in the dark, especially to Felix’s little ears, the night sounds of the station seemed amplified a hundredfold.

There were no trains on the platforms. Instead, the melodies she could hear, and which mesmerised her, came from the swish of the public rubbish bags moving in the wind on their frames; from the syncopated rhythm of a woman’s high heels as she clicked her way along the concourse; from the constant buzz of electricity coming from the station lights or its signals, which were always switched on. Felix was very alert and seemed very on edge – but she wasn’t alone. Gareth loitered, just a few steps behind her, keeping an eye on his charge. She had grown so much, but she was still a kitten, and somehow looked suddenly smaller, standing on the threshold of this brave new world.

Reassured by his presence, Felix turned back to face Platform 1. She sat down in the doorway, perhaps a little abruptly. She took a few moments to take it all in, her head moving from left to right as she assessed everything that lay before her. The concrete of Platform 1 rolled gently to its edge. It was bordered by a shocking yellow line, and Felix felt no desire to see what was beyond its cliff-like edge, where the platform dropped away into nothingness. Beyond, across the blank emptiness, there was another platform, Platform 4; and if she looked to her left, she could just see the outer reaches of Platform 2, located at the very foot of her home on Platform 1. Platform 2 eventually tapered in a slope to the ground, but Felix couldn’t see that from the doorway; it might as well have been in Siberia, it seemed so far away to the little kitten. To her immediate right were the bike racks; and they struck her, even on that first scout outside, as a rather safe-looking haven. Perhaps she made a mental note for the future.

As the station cat quietly surveyed the scene, the evening breeze stirred her fur for the very first time, ruffling all that ebony fluff so that each cat hair quivered and moved in the August air. She blinked those big green eyes of hers. She twitched her long white whiskers, sniffing all those brand-new smells. She looked rather as though she was thinking: Wow .

Felix, meet the world.

World, meet Felix.

Though the kitten didn’t know it yet, all this would be her kingdom.

9. Brave New World

‘Coming, Felix?’

Gareth Hope paused at the doorway of the office, a day or so later. The kitten didn’t need asking twice. She dived across the office, scampered up his long thin legs, and nestled herself on his shoulder, like a pirate’s parrot.

‘Today, Felix,’ he told her, ‘we’re going to be doing security checks.’

These were a regular part of every shift, important to make sure that the station was running smoothly and safely. They involved a circuit of the entire station, including investigation of various nooks and crannies, so it was a good way to introduce Felix to the wider parameters of her new home. She was still so small, she wouldn’t be walking: instead, Gareth would become her long-legged chariot, transporting her all the way.

Since her first taste of the station’s exterior on that summer’s night a few days ago, Gareth and some of the other team members had accompanied her outside again. She hadn’t gone much further than the doorway, and had only ever gone out late at night. Between the hours of 00.30 and 05.00, Huddersfield station locked its large, panelled, blue front doors and bolted them with a sturdy bronze pole. During the night, they were only opened again sporadically, fifteen minutes before the departure time of the services that ran in the wee small hours, then closed immediately afterwards. When the doors were locked, only Felix and the two team members on duty were around, so it was the perfect time to introduce the kitten to a trainless, customerless Platform 1. She was too timid to explore very far, but she did like to go behind the bike racks. The metal docking stations towered above her like an iron forest, and she seemed to feel secure behind those thick steel ‘branches’, with the yellow-brick wall of the office just a pace or two to her back.

That evening, Gareth was taking her out a little earlier than she was used to, before the sun had set. It had been a glorious summer’s day, and the heat was still shimmering around the station as Felix and Gareth set off along Platform 1. Felix’s enormous green eyes darted this way and that: there was so much for the little kitten to see. More customers were about for a start, and her ears pricked up at the rumble of a wheelie case along the concourse, or the sound of a man’s deep laugh. She was very used to people by now, so these noises didn’t trouble her; nor did the humans who kept doing double takes at the duo as Felix and Gareth passed them.